


no compasses, no signs

by waveridden



Series: history, again [2]
Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Other, Season/Series 12, Tokyo Lift (Blaseball Team)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:08:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29833704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waveridden/pseuds/waveridden
Summary: Time is not clocks and it is not water or wind or anything. Time is time, and that is the most dangerous thing about it.(Val, Nerd, Quitter, and the question of control.)
Relationships: Val Hitherto & Wyatt Quitter, Val Hitherto/Nerd Pacheco
Series: history, again [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2193246
Comments: 10
Kudos: 17





	no compasses, no signs

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes you're like "I'm going to take this season and not write anything because I'm busy" and then someone on your team gets abruptly shelled and you have feelings about it. a normal universal experience.
> 
> Technically not a sequel to my Nerd/Val 12x100, but that's the closest thing I have to a manifesto for this ship so I'm linking them together. title is from Invisible String by Taylor Swift, which is a NerdVal song.
> 
> CWs for loose references to mind control and a vaguely detailed description of an allergic reaction.

The first thing that Val learned about time, when he began using it as a means to an end, was that it is not a river, nor putty in hands or anything tangible, even in the most intangible of metaphors. Time is not clocks and it is not water or wind or anything. Time is time, and that is the most dangerous thing about it.

There are fixed events. It’s the Titanic paradox: every time traveler who goes back to try to save the ship is part of the reason it sinks. Val knows these things like the back of his hand. It’s kiddie stuff. You can’t change the unchangeable.

But there is a second lesson, one infinitely harder to learn and internalize: there are events that are fixed because it’s too difficult to tease them apart from one another. It would be like trying to un-sew a gown, thread by thread. One wrong move will disintegrate the whole thing.

Val was in the twenty-second century, and he had to make a choice. He could have found a fixed point, a Titanic, somewhere to hide. Or he could have found a tangled mess and learned to call it a home.

He picked the latter. He picked the Lift.

  
  


#

  
  


Wyatt Quitter is not Val’s best friend on the team.

If he were pressed to pick, he would say Grollis, or perhaps Gerund, but not Quitter. But he finds himself spending time with them over the grand siesta nonetheless, in between jobs, in between… well.

“You’ve been spending time with that Sunbeams guy,” Quitter says. The two of them are at a cafe in Tokyo, one that Quitter picked. It’s dim here, so dim that Val has to squint, but Quitter doesn’t seem bothered by it. “You know you’re going to play against them, right?”

“We play against everyone,” Val points out.

Quitter grimaces. “But you know it’s blaseball, right?”

“Of course I do.”

“You don’t know what it means,” Quitter says, and there’s an edge to it that’s familiar, desperate, something Val doesn’t hear often.

The Lift are all amateurs. Val would have to be an idiot not to realize. They all know it, and they’re fine with it. They don’t play games to win tournaments, they play games to play. Quitter has never seemed to mind that.

But there’s an additional pressure here that Val doesn’t know. Blaseball took Quitter’s name. Blaseball trapped Quitter in a peanut shell. Blaseball turned Quitter against their friends, and then it spat them out onto a new team where nobody understood what they had survived.

Val doesn’t even understand. He feels like he could, given time, but not yet.

“Last season was only the sun,” he says. He means it as a reassurance but Quitter grimaces. “It could be safe this season.”

“Safe,” Quitter repeats. “I know you haven’t been here long, Hitherto, but come the fuck on.”

Val has to admit: they have a point.

  
  


#

  
  


He believes he understands. He tricks himself into believing it. He reassures Nerd a thousand times that he is not afraid, not even when he discovers he was wrong about the weather. The Lift play their first game in an eclipse, and Val sits in the dugout and watches as nothing happens. He pitches as it rains blood, and he watches as birds circle, and—

He does not understand until a peanut falls down Cudi’s throat.

They fall to the ground, choking. When they stand up, they wave off Stijn to stand on their own.

It should be nothing. It’s anaphylaxis. Val’s allergic to cherries, something he forgets regularly, but he’s experienced the reactions before. He knows what it feels like. Terrible, certainly, but it’s a survivable allergy, and they should recover easily.

This is not anaphylaxis. Allergic feels like the wrong word for watching Cudi lose their footing over and over, adjust their prosthesis as though it will help, try again when it does not. Allergic does not describe the relief with which they collapse to sitting in the dugout, sweating, as Grollis and Ayanna begin fussing over them.

Val locks eyes with Quitter. They only shrug.

  
  


#

  
  


“You’re not allergic to peanuts,” Val says, almost hesitantly.

“I’m not,” Nerd says. Even just hearing their voice over the phone is reassuring. Val wishes he could see them, but they’d agreed it’s too difficult to travel during the season. A shame. Val’s close to breaking that promise now, but this doesn’t feel like enough to warrant it. “I never was, actually, but we got a blessing that changed us.”

“Good,” Val says, and does not think about Cudi convulsing on the ground, and does not imagine Nerd in their place. “Good.”

“Are you?” Nerd asks, forcibly light.

Val is not allergic to peanuts. But that was not an  _ allergy. _

“I don’t know,” he says, and they move past it.

  
  


#

  
  


He does see Nerd, eventually: a series against the Sunbeams, a month into the season. They play in Tokyo, and so Nerd stays in Val’s apartment, old stomping grounds.

“It was more fun when we could do anything we wanted,” Nerd mumbles one night.

Val hums. He’s only had the one season where he couldn’t do anything he wanted, and he has to say, he does miss being able to gallivant through time with his partner.

“If you could be anywhere right now,” Val says, “where would it be?”

Nerd snorts. “Why think about that? I’m already here with you.”

“That you are,” Val murmurs, trying not to sound too pleased.

  
  


#

  
  


The next game Val pitches is against the Spies, another series in Tokyo. The peanuts are especially bad, but Val doesn’t mind. He’s found that sunhats keep them out of his face, and they go quite well with his outfit.

It’s a miserable game, of course. The Spies are a good team. By the time the third inning rolls around the Lift are already losing resoundingly, but they’re in good spirits as ever.

Quitter steps up to bat. They step on peanut shells beneath their feet, gait heavy. They reach down and drag a finger through the peanut dust on home plate and they laugh.

Something is wrong.

Val’s not sure what’s wrong, exactly, but he’s not the only one who notices. Cudi, deep in conversation with Elwin, stops abruptly and turns to look at the field. Nandy gets to her feet. Even Stijn frowns, hands on hips, and watches.

What’s happening to Quitter is not anaphylaxis, and it’s not whatever happened to Cudi either. They’re shaking, but that’s the wrong word for it. It’s less a tremor and more an undulation, rocking back and forth on their feet, hair swaying around their shoulders.

The shortstop for the Spies, a nondescript person Val doesn’t recognize, steps forward. “Quitter?” they call, voice sharp with worry. “What is it?”

Quitter turns and looks at them. “I remember,” they say, and their voice is quiet but Val can hear it as though it’s in his ear. “I understand again. Do you want to try?”

“Do I want,” the shortstop says, and then —

To say the shell crashes is understatement and overstatement all at once. Val can’t understand it. There is noise and silence and a rush of air and stillness, and above all else there is a peanut shell where there used to be a shortstop.

Several of the Spies cry out in alarm. Quitter falls to their knees, still swaying back and forth. Then they blink, and they blink more furiously, and fall down to scramble backwards, chest heaving.

Stijn is out on the field in a heartbeat. Val, to his surprise, is right on his heels, striding purposefully towards Quitter.

“Wyatt,” Stijn says, and drops to his knees. “What was that?”

“I didn’t do that,” Quitter says, sounding very far away. “I can’t do that. I’m not them anymore. I couldn’t— did I do that?”

Stijn opens his mouth, but before he can answer, Val says, “Maybe.” It’s blunt, and unkind. But when Quitter turns to look at him, they look more focused. “Maybe not.”

“It was good for a while,” Quitter says. They sit up a little straighter. The Spies are turning towards home plate now, staring at the three of them. “I know it sounds impossible. But when I was there, it was good for a while.”

“I believe you,” Val says, because he does. And then, “We need to keep playing,” because they do.

Quitter gets to their feet of their own volition. They hit a single. They do not apologize to the Spies.

  
  


#

  
  


Val tries to travel back to watch the game again. He’s never done it before, and it proves to be expectedly impossible. Blaseball is at a boiling point and there is no separating the liquid from steam from sky from pot. The game is over; Denzel Scott is in a shell. He can’t watch it happen again. Time won’t let him.

“Next time one of your teammates shells someone,” Nerd says, voice tight, “don’t run onto the field.”

Val hums and doesn’t answer. It’s not that he doesn’t understand the risk. It’s simply that it wasn’t a choice.

  
  


#

  
  


Play continues. The Lift play the Jazz Hands. Holden Stanton chokes on a peanut and Val looks away. They lose games. They win games, too, a foreign experience. Quitter doesn’t speak to many people, but they talk to him. Val would like to think that’s a good sign.

“We never play each other anymore,” Nerd sighs. “I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

“I could visit,” Val says, almost too quickly. “I could—”

“We agreed.”

Val pauses. “So I shouldn’t tell you I’m outside your door.”

“What?” Nerd says, a little sharply. “No you’re not.”

“I’m not,” Val admits. “I could be, if you wanted.”

“I always want to see you,” Nerd mutters, and Val aches with fondness. “We said not until the season was over, but—”

“I can be there.”

Nerd lets out a breath. “Would you?” they say. They sound very small.

“Always,” Val promises, and goes to get dressed.

It only takes a handful of minutes before he steps into the stairwell of Nerd’s apartment with sushi in hand. Nerd’s waiting outside their apartment. As soon as Val rounds the corner their eyes brighten.

“Brought dinner,” Val says.

“I also ordered dinner.”

“Shame,” Val says, as though he hadn’t ordered specifically so Nerd would have leftovers tomorrow. He doesn’t like sushi. Nerd hasn’t figured this out yet. “Hello again, professor.”

“Hi,” Nerd says, and catches Val with both hands around his waist. Val has to lean up to kiss him, just slightly, and Nerd is there, like always. They’re always so warm, mouth against Val’s, fingers digging into his hips. It’s less about the romance, Val thinks, and more about making sure that he’s there.

Val has always been self indulgent. He stole art for himself and he ran for solace in the most interesting place he could find. This, now, is no exception: he stays the night, and the morning. He lets Nerd make him breakfast.

Worst and best of all, he allows himself to believe, however briefly, that they’re both safe.

  
  


#

  
  


Four days later, the Lift finish a game. Val opens the Sunbeams game on his phone, watching idly more than anything else. He very rarely pays attention to other games, given how often he’s busy playing his own. He’s being a team player, or something like it.

But he’s watching as the Sunbeams game tips into extra innings. He’s watching as Nerd steps up to bat.

Val is watching when Peanut Bong, on the pitcher’s mound, begins to sway.

He sucks in a sharp breath. Quitter leans over his shoulder, halfway through asking what’s happening, when they realize. He doesn’t protest as they wrench his phone out of his hand, or as they steer him somewhere to sit down.

“I’d like to see,” Val says. His voice sounds distant; he swallows, hoping for some kind of steadiness. “Please.”

“No you don’t,” Quitter says. “No, come on, Hitherto.”

He’s already fumbling in his pockets. “I have to go there.”

“Fine,” Quitter says curtly, and fastens both hands around his arm. “Let’s go.”

He doesn’t bother arguing. By the time they make the jump to Los Angeli, another run has been scored. The Sunbeams are all clustered around a massive peanut shell.

Val wants to laugh. The cognitive dissonance is surreal. That can’t be Nerd Pacheco. He just saw them four days ago. They teach night classes at the community college. They can’t be in there. It doesn’t make sense.

“Sexton got out,” Quitter says. “I was there when it happened. He said it didn’t hurt. He was okay.”

“Right,” Val says. “That’s my partner.”

Quitter is still clinging to his arm, a death grip that doesn’t let up. “You can talk to the Sunbeams if you want.”

“You wouldn’t come with me.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“I’ll speak to them later,” Val says. He waits, forces himself to take a shuddering breath, and then says: “Was it bad?”

“Not at first. Not until it was,” Quitter says. Strangely, it doesn’t make Val feel better. “They’ll be fine. I mean, look at me, right?”

Val finally looks away from the shell to cut them a sideways glance. “Is that supposed to be reassuring?”

“It made you stop hyperventilating,” Quitter mutters. Val has to admit they have a point.

  
  


#

  
  


Val has not been parted from his time travel device since he began traveling. He gave it to Nerd, once, and they’d had it back within the hour, and he still had panicked the whole time.

But as soon as they’re back in Tokyo, he gives it to Quitter. “I don’t trust myself with this.”

“You don’t want to try to save them?”

“I have to try,” Val says, helplessly. “If I have this I’ll try to save them, and I won’t be able to, because that’s not how these things work. I have to try, and that’s why you need not to let me.”

“They’ll be fine,” Quitter says, but they pocket the device. “It’ll be fine.”

“The weather was supposed to be fine too.”

Quitter rolls their eyes. “Great, sure, then you’re going to get incinerated in an eclipse and so will they, and you’ll be very happy in the hall together with your significant other, who will be trapped in a shell till the end of time.”

Val wishes that didn’t make him feel better. It feels like a betrayal. But, he supposes, Nerd would want them to have some kind of levity.

Hm. No, he can’t start thinking of them in the past tense. Not yet. Fate has separated them, but maybe Quitter is right. Maybe things will be…  _ fine. _

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @waveridden on Tumblr/Twitter, come say hi!


End file.
